County sends out corrected tax bills

By John FischerStaff writer

Posted
12/11/08

ARENAC COUNTY — When county tax bills were sent out in late November, some of the bills included an exemption that shouldn’t have included one.

According to Arenac County Equalization Director Linda Lewandowski, the original commercial personal property tax bills had a full 18-mill exemption included, an error she says she knew about but would have been more costly to fix by pulling the bills before being sent out.

“We (Arenac County) get a bulk rate for our postage and printing,” Lewandowski said. “It would have cost us an additional $1,600 to stop the bills from being distributed.

“This was just a more sensible approach.”

She says in light of a new law, the Operating Michigan Business Commercial Tax is exempt only from 12 of the 18 mills, which help fund Arenac Eastern, Standish-Sterling, Tawas Area and Whittemore-Prescott area schools.

“I don’t think the schools would have been too happy with those exemptions,” Lewandowski said. “All in all, the error only affected no more than 600 bills in the whole county.”

County residents received the revised bills one day after the first bills on Nov. 28, she says.

“It was just a clerical error,” Lewandowski said. “We (Arenac County) knew about the problem but this was just a much cheaper solution.”